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Friday, May 16, 2008
High cost of death penalty: Worth it?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Whether you believe the death penalty is moral or immoral, what about the cost to taxpayers? Cara H. Drinan, law professor at The Catholic University in Washington discusses the $2 million Georgia has spent on the Brian Nichols case- and he has not even come to trial yet. Read column here. Death penalty cases, she argues, have virtually ruined Georgia’s once highly acclaimed statewide indigent defense system. “… replace the death penalty without life without parole, as New Jersey has recently done,” she argues. New Jersey legislators, she writes, “were able to satisfy their constituents that the death penalty simply was not worth its prohibitive price.”
Is it worth the price?
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Is commuter rail an answer?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An AJC op-ed columnist notes she is “in full support of this state’s organizing a research team to seriously investigate the notion of a commuter rail system linking the suburbs to downtown. Just last week, Forbes magazine named Atlanta traffic the absolute worst in the entire United States. Yep, according to the study, “commuters spend 60 hours a year stuck in traffic, second only to those in Los Angeles.”
She also urges: ” State of Georgia, please get this ball rolling. Please organize a research team. Please at least entertain this idea. Together we can continue to make strides in being a world-class city.”
Could commuter rail be an answer to traffic congestion?
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Are we raising useless kids?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Karen Heller writes about childhood: “For centuries, childhood barely existed. If a child could walk, he could work. A daughter was to be bartered. Today, this remains true in many of the world’s poorest countries.”
Yet in our country, “children study hard, some very hard so they can apply to the same 27 colleges and have their young souls crushed like beetles for no apparent reason than unrealistic expectations and pack mentality.:”
In the summers, “they’re released into the wider world where they’re equipped to do absolutely nothing other than master ‘Grand Theft Auto IV.”
Their greatest skill, she writes, “Is hanging while spending other people’s money.”
They can “text at the speed of sound, yet can’t follow a transit schedule. They’re brilliant and stupid.”
Your reaction?
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